Infants and other incontinent individuals wear disposable absorbent articles such as diapers to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Absorbent garments having fixed sides (e.g., training pants or pull-on diapers) have become popular for use on children able to walk and often who are toilet training. The pull-on garment has a waist opening and a pair of leg openings and typically comprises a main portion containing an absorbent core therein and side portions extending transversely outwardly from the main portion. Because of the side ear panel transversely extending from the main portion, a typical pull-on garment has a “T” shape in which the torso portion of the garment is transversely wider than the crotch portion of the garment when the garment is in a flat uncontracted and unfolded condition.
In addition, many disposable pull-on garments use elastic elements secured in an elastically contractible condition in the waist and/or leg openings. Typically, in order to insure full elastic fit about the leg and the waist such as is provided with durable undergarments, the leg openings and waist opening are encircled with elasticized bands of rubber or other materials positioned along the curve of the opening. The elasticized materials contract the leg openings and waist opening and deform the shape of the garment. Specifically, because the garment is typically designed to provide the waist opening with a sufficient stretchability, the portion of the garment around the waist opening contracts and deforms much more than the rest of the garment. The elasticized materials provided around the waist opening also transversely contract and deform a portion of the absorbent core adjacent to the waist opening. As a result, the absorbent core which was originally, e.g., rectangle becomes deformed such that the longitudinal side edge of the absorbent core adjacent to the waist opening inclines toward the longitudinal centerline of the garment and the transverse width of the absorbent core adjacent to the waist opening is less than that of the crotch portion of the absorbent core.
An array of such garments is finally packaged into a package comprising, e.g., a flexible thin plastic film for shipment. Because of the original “T” shape of the garment in a flat uncontracted and unfolded condition and the garment shape deformed by the elasticized materials as explained above, the package containing an array of the pull-on garments does not form a well-balanced parallelepiped and stackability of packages deteriorates. While it is conceived that the ear portion of the garment is folded along the longitudinal side edge of the absorbent core, the absorbent core has been deformed due to the elasticized materials and the longitudinal side edge of the absorbent core has been also deformed to incline as explained above. Therefore, folding the ear panel along the longitudinal side edge of the absorbent core does not necessarily provide the garment with an advantageous shape to improve stackability of package.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a disposable pull-on garment to provide an improved stackability of package containing an array of the garment which is deformed by elasticized materials. None of the existing disposable pull-on garment provides all of the advantages and benefits of the present invention.